Why The Universe Can Suck It

Some bidnezz first:

1. For those of you who have asked for pictures of the wedding, they ARE coming.  We are way behind on the post-wedding upkeep (including thank you cards, eek!), but I promise, pictures will come!

2. My new husband (giggle) has graciously agreed to guest blog the Paris half of the honeymoon for Shanti Town, so look out for that this weekend!

Now, ahem...on with the show!

Why The Universe Can Suck It.

So...I was talking through a problem last week with a dear friend of mine who, like me, has a tendency toward the symbolic when working through tangled situations  (or, well, I do this with EVERY situation, not just tangled ones)...what does this mean?  She asked me.  What is the universe trying to tell me?  And I pondered this, seriously, as we spoke.

I thought of all the times in my own life I've searched for answers in little clues.  I thought about the times I've spent minutes or hours or days deciphering some happenstance encounter or phone call or dream or...license plate (yikes!)...pulling it apart, trying to discern it's deeper meaning, it's buried clues.  Why did that car show up at THIS moment with THAT message written on it?!  I thought about how this usually never leads me anywhere but into deepening anxiety.  But how I always feel like I must be doing deep spiritual work, investigating the minutia of my life in this way.  But that deep down I always also sort of feel like a giant goober, letting my day get hijacked by a street sign.

And then I thought about my new mantra:

The Universe Can Suck It.  

(Sometimes it's more strongly worded than that in my head, but this is a family blog so...insert expletives as you see fit).

The Universe Can Suck It, people, not because there's anything wrong with the Universe, not because I no longer believe in the Universal, but because, come ON.  Dude (Universe), if you want me to KNOW something, can you try to be a little less cagey about it all?  I mean, is this really how I think the larger forces in the world, the ones that are supposedly all-good and all-knowing, work?  Do I really think that they're just planting mildly uncomfortable and completely unintelligible signs in my life for me to turn my self into knots trying to work out?  If so, then I have a few ground rules that I am going to need to lay down for this frat-boy prankster of a universe:

1.  If you would like me to know something, please make it clear.  If I'm, you know, "off the path", or about to make some mistake or missing some big piece of the puzzle...just go ahead and lay it out for me.  I can take it, just put them cards on the table.  UNTIL then, until I have clear and unmistakeable clarity about your intentions, please don't be offended if I just ignore you.

2.  I'm in charge.  This means, I make the decisions about my life that I want to make.  I will base those decisions on my personal well-being and present-moment happiness.  If you have a problem with that, I apologize, and please see item #1, above.  In the meantime, I will NOT be searching the world for signs of your approval.  Turns out, I don't actually need your approval to make decisions.  So there.

3.  And this is a big one...I am done with you being cast as some distant mean-girl frenemy in my life.  If you want to be a participatory force in my world (which, you know, I know you dooooo), then you're going to need to work WITH me.  I'm making the decision that my own peace of mind is more important than figuring out what the hell you're up to, so...I'll be over here living my life, and you are welcome any time.  But I'm not going to bring anything to a halt to go chasing you down.  You little snot.

This is what I'm telling the Universe, this is what I told my friend, and this is what I'm telling you, lovely beautiful amazing Shanti-towners...which is: who CARES what it means.  Signs, omens, premonitions...it's all either just one more thing that can hold you back from living your life and living it fully, or it's not.  And I'm choosing not.  Because in my heart of hearts, I can't believe that any of those things, the "signs" that fill us with dread at their possible meaning...none of those things come from the big giant heart of the Universe.  Those things come from the tiny and unimaginative universe, the one that lives in all of our heads, and they are best disposed of quickly and totally.

Trust me on this one, if the Universe wants you to know something...she is going to make it known, in no uncertain terms, and it's going to feel like LOVE.  Not fear.

So the next time you find yourself trying to untangle the hidden meaning of the black cat crossing your path or the cockroach on your wedding dress (don't ask), just tell the Universe...

Well, you know.

Returned!

That's right, we did it.

M-A-R-R-I-E-D!!

I'm going to try not to gush too much, but this was, without question, one of the happiest days I have ever had. And I feel very, very (very) lucky.  To be married to the man I'm married to.  I am more in love with him now than I have ever been.  And that is saying something.

Everything went so beautifully...the whole week leading up to the wedding, Paul and I were both blown away by the efforts of our families and friends, we just felt love and support coming at us from all sides and it made for an incredible ceremony and reception.  I didn't want the day to end...I thought I was going to want to leave the party early, I thought I would be too exhausted to stay up until the wee hours, but it was all just too good to say goodnight to.  Eventually I just sort of collapsed onto Paul's lap and closed my eyes, and this apparently was the sign that the festivities should come to an end.  It was 4AM.

We crazily volunteered to host a brunch the next morning after the wedding, and so me and the husband (giggle), barely got any sleep before we were up again, clearing out empty bottles and figuring out how exactly we were supposed to make eggs for 70 people by 10 AM....  It happened, god knows how it happened, but it did.  Thanks again to our intrepid friends, who were busily running to the grocery store and making pancakes in back-rooms in order to make it all come together.  And after brunch there were goodbyes to be said and cleaning to be done and tables and chairs to prep for the rental company...before we knew it was 5pm, and Paul and I were loading ourselves into our jam-packed rental car and heading off to a nearby hotel to try and get some real sleep.  In the car we went over and over the details of the day before...how wonderful it all was, how beautiful, how eloquent and smart and lovely all our friends are...and by the time we got to the hotel I was too tired to even attempt a "we just got married" upgrade.  Any room would do.  As long as it had room service and a bed, which it did.

The next two days were full of unpacking from the wedding, returning all the various rental equipment, and then re-packing and preparing for the honeymoon.  There were several honeymoon details which had been flagrantly overlooked in service of wedding planning, and now we only had 48 hours to get prepared.  We barely had time to catch our breath after the wedding before we were on to figuring out what the best currency exchange rate was in Iceland.  It's a crazy transition, that wedding to honeymoon thing.

We flew all night long and arrived in Reykjavik early in the morning on a Thursday.  We arrived. Our bags, however, did not.  Our bags...containing all of our warm clothing for Iceland and all of our best clothing for the second leg of the trip in Paris.  The baggage clerk for Iceland Air told us she was sure our things would arrive late that night, but I had to fight to keep from crying all the same.

"Did you tell her it's our HONEYMOON?" I asked Paul.  As if her having that piece of information would get our bags to us any quicker.  As if they were just hiding our bags in the back room at the airport, waiting to see if we had a really goooooood reason that we needed them before they brought them out to us.

We spent the first day in Reykjavik purchasing scarves and looking up things to do and drinking so-so Icelandic beer at a local haunt:  Dillons, A Rock and Roll Bar, said the sign out front.  It wasn't very Rock and Roll at 4pm on a Thursday, but it was nice enough.

It was so gray and cold and we were so tired and everything felt so alien...especially without our bags and maybe doubly especially because the wedding now seemed like some beautiful far-away dream...how did we GET here?  On the bus ride in from the airport, looking out at the gray harbor and the still un-opened shops of Reykjavik I thought, oh...this is why people go to the beach for their honeymoon.  The idea of doing anything other than, well, nothing...seemed just too exhausting.

But the next morning, just as the baggage woman said they would be, our bags were delivered to our hotel, and it felt like the honeymoon might actually be able to begin.  Ah, to shower!  To change my socks!

We spent the next day and a half in Reykjavik, exploring what there was to explore...we went to the Blue Lagoon and treated ourselves to the "VIP Lounge", we wandered through the harbor, we ate...a lot.  The food in Iceland is amazing.  No one tells you this, but it is...it's so good.  Everything we ate, literally, no matter whether we'd gotten it at a restaurant or a bar or a coffee shop or some little sandwich stand...everything was perfectly prepared and just...delicious.  So, we partook of a lot of Icelandic cuisine.  We tried to find some theater to see, but didn't try very hard.  We walked a lot, took a lot of pictures, we even ended up at the art museum downtown just in time for the opening of a new exhibit and stood and drank the free wine while we listened to people give speeches in Icelandic.

But we realized quickly that we wanted to be deeper in to the natural beauty of the country, and so we took a tiny plane across the island to Husavik, a little fishing town way up north.  Almost as far north in Iceland as you can go.   Which is almost as far north anywhere as you can go.  Iceland is amazing because it's huge, but very sparsely populated.  There are only 330,000 residents, and nearly 85% of those residents live in Reykjavik.  This means you can drive and drive and drive in Iceland and not see another person for hours. Not even a car.  Sometimes not even a house.  But lots of sheep.  There are very fat and adorable sheep everywhere.  I think that Paul wanted to take one home...he was very taken by the sheep.

In Husavik we whale-watched, we ate, we fished in the little ponds near the cabins where we stayed, we soaked in a geo-thermal hot tub and drank more Icelandic beer, we read, we ate, we drove out to waterfalls and lava rock fields and strange martian landscapes, we drove through fog so thick you really couldn't tell whether the car was still on the ground or just floating in mid-air...it was good.  It was really, really good.

And just as we started to settle in, just as we started to get that, oh yes, okay, we're getting a handle on this place...it was time to get on a plane and fly to Paris!  (Tough life, I know).

Oh, Paris.

Oh, sweet, gorgeous, well-groomed Paris...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Doot-doot-doo-doooooooo....

(that was "here comes the bride", in case you don't read type-humming)

Alright, ladies and gentlemen of Shanti Town...it's time.  I am officially signing off until after my nuptials and post-nuptial-vacation (otherwise known as a honeymoon).  I can't fake it anymore...I have NOTHING else on my mind.  So, it's really better if I start the blog-cation now, and not keep anyone clicking around any longer.

I hope that while I'm away you'll check out this book, maybe amuse yourself at this amazing blog, maybe catch up on some episodes of any of my three favorite podcasts.  If I'm really lucky you'll hang out in my archives and catch up on some Shanti Town's of the past...but whatever you do, I hope you'll still be here when I get back.

I'm so touched that any of you are here and reading and commenting in the first place...it means so much to me, and I promise that when I return there will be more posting.  You'll have to let me know if the writing gets better or worse once I'm just another married lady!

I'm so excited, I can barely stand it.  I promise to share stories and pictures and all kinds of things upon my return.

Until then...namaste, y'all.

xoxo
YogaLia

Not Your Grandma's Props

It's a rare moment of quiet here at the ol' homestead...I'm in between classes and errands (like a trip to the makeup counter at Nordstrom where I will try not to reveal myself to be the clueless galumph that I am when it comes to all things cosmetics)...and I'm happy to have a moment to sit and write and sip at some overly-hot green tea.

(No, I have not successfully given up coffee...but I'm now down to one soy latte every-other day.  Pretty much.  They're so goooooooood.  And I'm not drinking any wiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.)

Aren't I allowed?  I'm allowed.

Anyhow, I want to talk props, people.  Not the movie-set variety, but the foam blocks and straps variety, and specifically why they are awesome and more specifically, why more people should know that they are awesome and actually start using them.

Some people are really good about this...some people dutifully grab an armful of blocks and blankets and straps before setting up for class and are quick to slide them underneath errant hands and feet when necessary.  These people are happy when using their props.  These people are usually not trying to win the yoga class, and so it is no great bruise to their ego if they occasionally need a little square foam help.

But not everyone is so, ahem, flexible.

The other night I was teaching a class in which there were several older men (60's?), some of them I knew, some of them I didn't, and all of them had obviously done yoga before...a couple of them seemed like they had probably been doing yoga for years and so their practices were pretty strong.  They were not, however, completely free from physical limitations.  (Who is?!)  And while one or two were doing a good job of taking care of themselves, there were a couple others--men who obviously knew each other, men who (it seemed) had something to prove to one another--who were not interested in this wimpy "taking care of yourself" business.  There was no resting for these fellows, no vinyasa skipping, no childspose-ing...just tight-jawed huffing and puffing their way into and out of poses.

Okay, fine.  Cool.  That's not my lesson to teach anyone.  I mean, god knows when I first started practicing I was just constantly trying to climb my way to the top of the class so I could earn some kind of "best student" trophy...so I knooooow from whence they come.  But there was one pose that we were doing, that involved reaching back for the foot of a bent back leg, that was just proving impossible for one of these gentlemen, and so I encouraged him to use a strap.  A strap, in this pose, would have made it not only possible, but actually ENJOYABLE.  He would have found the rolling back of his shoulder, the stretch at the front of the back thigh...but when I encouraged him to try the strap, even offering to help him set it up, his answer was a very definite:

No.

That's it.  He just looked at me and said, "NO.  No, thank you."  And then went back to aggravating himself with his out of reach foot.

And all that night and this morning I kept thinking...the poor guy doesn't know what he's missing!  He doesn't know that props are amazing, and that they will only improve a practice, that the body will actually open faster if it's supported.  No one's ever told him that.  Or they have, but someone more compelling has apparently told him that props mean you. Can't. Do. It.  And that taking a prop means admitting defeat.  And I have to admit...had this been a young woman who had so frankly refused me, I might have made it a point to say something about props to the class, about how yoga is not about successfully executing poses as much as it is just witnessing yourself attempting to execute poses...but I didn't.  Because, I don't know...I feel like you shouldn't mess with old dudes.

But it got me thinking about props in general, and about this strange stigma around them--I see it in so many students, and certainly for years I saw it in myself.  I had a student this morning who has an injury, an actual injury, and when I told her she should start using a block in triangle on that side of her body she looked absolutely crestfallen.  And I thought, well, this must be because props=help, and we can not avoid our ingrained protestant work ethic which finishes that equation as: props=help, help=failure.

And I thought about how reluctant I am, sometimes, to reach out in my own life when I need supporting.  To use my family and friends and therapist and doctors and dentists and whomever else to prop me up.  Because I don't want them to know I need it.  Because I want to do it on my own.

NO.  No, thank you.

But if it's true that the body will open more quickly if it's supported--isn't the same thing true of the heart and the mind?  Isn't this why we need our homes and our families and our friends so very, very much...because just the knowledge that they're there, just the fact that they make the ground a little steadier, allows us to take wing that much quicker?  And isn't this the really magical part of the yoga practice?  Because by gosh, if you are unwilling to even allow yourself the helping hand of a square piece of foam in a yoga class, a place where there are no real stakes whatsoever, you can bet that same pattern is resonating all over your life in other ways.  And if you missed it in your life, it's going to show up for you right there on your mat.

I just...I love that.

So, Shanti-Towners, do yourself a favor...prop yourself up.  Use whatever you've got.  Just bring the ground a little closer, and then see how much further you can reach...

Pre-Wedding Confessions

1.  This post is not going to be about yoga, please forgive me.

2.  The fiance and I have given up drinking in these few weeks before the wedding, in order to keep our heads and bodies clear.  We have also given up coffee, and even though I know that there is nothing less helpful in quieting my constantly running mental to-do list, I still keep sneaking medium soy lattes from my favorite coffee shop.  I can not help myself.

3.  Though I am teaching a bazillion classes a week, my own yoga practice is currently, well...laughable.  This week it has consisted of a few hour long sessions of rolling around on my mat while listening to NPR.  Why while listening to NPR?  Because (and here's the confession part) I am actually bribing myself to practice with promises of in-practice distraction.  Because the last thing I want to do, honestly, after a day full of public pose-wrangling...is yoga.  I may not be practicing well, but at least I am still keeping up on my Planet Money podcast.

4. Lately I find myself going into short spasms of wedding anxiety, partially because we DO have a lot to do and we DON'T have a lot of time, but also to assuage my bride-guilt for not being more upset about things that have gone wrong.  Like the woman who ran away with my dress.  And the property manager who ran away with our hay.  All stories for another time.  But, having heard from too many female friends that they would have been up nights with anxiety about my (now solved) wedding dress fiasco...I started accumulating a small amount of "I'm not worried enough about this" guilt.  Which has now manifested in several bouts of misplaced upset about things I'm maybe not actually all that upset about.  It is my tragic gift--I am unflappable about most mishaps in my concrete life (i.e. disappearing wedding dress), but often inconsolable about things in my imaginary one (i.e., why aren't I more upset about my disappeared wedding dress?!).

5.  As excited as I am for the wedding, as much as I can't wait for it to get here and also don't want it to be over as quickly as I know it will be over, I have also secretly wished, on several occasions, that we had just hauled ourselves off to a justice of the peace somewhere and gotten married all alone.  When we were first looking for venues, months ago, we ended up in conversation with a young woman running one of the Inns in Big Bear, who had recently been married herself.  Where did you get married, we asked.  In San Diego, she said.  Was it a big wedding, we asked.  No, she said, it was just us, at the courthouse.  That sounds nice, we said, did you have a reception after? No, she said, you're going to laugh--we just went to a baseball game.  We both swooned with the loveliness at the thought of it, even then.  I am doubly swooning now.

6.  One of the things they don't tell you about wedding planning is that the nearer you get to the wedding, the more time you and your other spend talking doing and fighting about all things wedding.  It is a rare meal that goes by these days that we are not to-do-ing each other to death.  It's necessary, I know.  It's temporary, I know.  But still...I can't wait to be able to go see a movie again.  With my (giggle)...husband.

7.  Even for all this, I can't listen to the song we've picked for our first dance without tearing up.  And imagining standing there with him and saying our vows?  Forget it, I'm done for.

8.  And what continues to surprise me, even after these 6+ years we've spent together, is how shockingly lucky I feel to have A. fallen in love with a man who is so good, B. somehow done enough charming somethings to convince this man that he might like to spend the rest of his life with me, and C. have made it through long enough to be standing right on the precipice of marriage to this man.  There are a lot of broken marriages in my family...all necessary and all survived...but because of this (and a myriad of other things) I never grew up with any inkling that I might be blessed with a deep, committed relationship that works and is healthy and does no harm, and so I feel extravagantly blessed these days.

9.  And as long as my recently surgery-ed tooth doesn't explode, my face doesn't break out in pre-wedding acne revenge, and/or no one locks either one of us in a closet on the blessed day, I actually think it all might go off without a hitch.

10.  Or, rather...with a hitch.  A big one.  A mighty good one.

Suzanne Morrison is a (Yoga) Bitch...

Oh, dear readers, allow me, in my total wedding-crazed absence, to point you in the direction of some awesomeness elsewhere on the web...

My dear friend and yoga-blogging-compatriot, Suzanne Morrison, is hurrying towards the release date of her first book, Yoga Bitch, even more quickly than I am hurrying towards matrimony.  She has just launched a fancy new website, which, in conjunction with her blog, is an awesome place to get the scoop on Yoga Bitch, to buy a copy, or to watch her very funny and excellent teaser trailers in preparation of the book's release.

I've written about Suzanne before...she's super cool, and though I've not read her book yet, I'm convinced it's going to be super cool as well...

Go check her out!  Dooooooo it.

This Hamster is FOCUSED...

First of all, Shanti-towners, thank you!  Because, Shanti Town has now hit 100 followers!  Small potatoes in the blog-o-sphere at large, but a big deal for this lady, so thank you, very much!  I'm so happy to have you all here!

Ahem.  On with the show.

The other day, in the midst of my third wedding-related melt-down in as many days, whilst trying to explain my deep state of overwhelm to my very amazing soon-to-be husband, he gently (as is his way) pointed out to me that perhaps part of the problem wasn't the amount of work to be done, but the way in which I was trying to go about doing it.  He reminded me that often it is my habit to try and carry around and accomplish all things at all times, instead of setting out to do just one thing in an allotted amount of time.

The problem, in other words, was focus.

(And just for clarity's sake, let me just say...we are BOTH very involved in the wed-planning.  This is not one of those bride doing all the work until she makes herself crazy, situations.  Just so ya know.  I'm just more prone to, um...crying.)

Okay, so...where was I?

Oh, right.  Focus.

Sooooooo...my wise mister suggests it might be about focus.  And as soon as he says it, I think back to an interview I had been (re)listening to the day before, with these two writers/parents of an autistic child, about autism.  And in the interview at one point the dad talks about how one of the traits common in people with autism is the ability to focus really deeply on something, to the exclusion of all other things.  He talked about how this was also a notable trait in most people we consider masters or geniuses, and I remember thinking, even at the time...argh! I'm doomed!!  

Not because I don't know how to focus, I do...but because I forget, so often, the importance of focus and instead let the guise of obsessive productivity take it's place.

And I thought about what it's like, you know, to really focus on something...the way that the whole world can just drop away and time sort of fans out, like it might just go on forever.  You know that feeling?

So, with all this on my mind and in preparation for classes, I took it to the books...specifically to The Heart of Yoga by Mr. TKV Desikachar (a famous yogi dude), to get a refresher course on the last three limbs of yoga:  Dhāraṇā, Dhyāna, and Samādhi.

Okay, brief primer: Dhāraṇā is the sixth limb of yoga (of the famed eight limbs that make up the backbone of the yoga philosophy) and it is, essentially, concentration.

Dhyāna, is the seventh limb, otherwise known as, meditation, and;

Samādhi, the eighth limb, which is bliss...absorption...the big tamale, the grand prize at the end of it all: enlightenment, yo.

Okay, so, these last three limbs...they're my favorite (philosophically), because of how beautifully they work together and what a smooth final progression they form to lead a body to bliss.  Basically it works like this:

In Dhāraṇā, when you're focused on a singular object (or person or idea, or whatever)...your mind is quiet and moving in just one direction, toward the object of your focus.  You're checking it out, you're learning about it, you're mind is on it, and only on it.  You're focused.

And if you keep doing this for awhile, you get to move up a level, to Dhyāna...meditation.  When you're in Dhyāna, you've still got this movement of your mind and your attention in the direction of your chosen object, but NOW, you've also got stuff coming back at you, from said object.  It's vibing you back.  And so inspirations are arising in you from the object, insights come seemingly out of nowhere...but it's not nowhere, it's just that the lines of communication have been opened (thanks to your dutiful focus) and now energy is moving in two directions, back and forth.  This is Dhyāna.

And last but not least...if you can hang with your meditation, this deepened state of focus, something amazing might just happen...instead of you just sending your attention out to the object or it sending something back at you...now you and the object become one and the same.  There is no more you.  There is no more object of attention.  You are subsumed, consumed, by one another.  And this is Samādhi.  This is bliss.

And isn't it, though?  Isn't that bliss?  To be so deeply involved in what you're doing, in what's right in front of you that the whole world, and you, and it...just disappear?  I think this is just the most perfect description what deep focus is.

But the magic...the amazing part of this whole process, is that you can't just sit down and DO it.  You can't sit down and say, now I'm going to be in Samādhi, or even, now I'm going to focus, because if your mind is wild or distracted or upset, well...good f-ing luck.   These are organic states, that arise organically, so the only thing you can do to practice them, is to cultivate an environment that might just have fertile ground from which they can grow.

And that's why we practice.
And that's why we breathe.

And that's why, when we get overwhelmed, it might behoove us just to go for a walk, or read some lovely something, or just sit on our little porch and drink some tea and let the wind brush against us.

Like I am going to go and do...right. now.